What Would 'Victory' for Israel in Gaza Really Look Like?

These are portraits of young soldiers killed in Gaza on October 7 and in the 19 months of fighting since. They were plastered on the walls by a group called "Forum HaGvura" (The Heroism Forum), a group of bereaved parents who oppose a cease-fire in Gaza, instead demanding to continue the war "until victory."

But what is "victory"?

It's not always well-defined. For Forum HaGvura and similar groups, it echoes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's vague "Total Victory" slogan. After all, he often meets with their delegations, and figures close to him have helped found and finance these groups. For others within this camp, it is the more explicit vision of Netanyahu's far-right and messianic partners – like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – to destroy all of the Gaza Strip and cleanse it of its population as a prelude to annexation and settlement.

What is clear to them is what victory is not. It's not ending the war in a cease-fire agreement of any form with Hamas. Victory must be nothing short of unconditional surrender by Hamas. For some, even that isn't enough. In their eyes, victory is Hamas, and preferably every building and person in Gaza, wiped off the face of the earth.

This definition of victory has one undeniable virtue: it works as a slogan. It's easily marketable to a public still suffering from the trauma of October 7. Though, if polls from recent months are anything to go by, it's a slogan that has lost much of its appeal. Most Israelis no longer believe in it and would prefer to see the hostages coming home alive over exterminating Hamas.

Victory or defeatism. Victory or treason.

That's why pro-war groups are getting so much support from the Netanyahu camp - and why they're intensifying the victory campaign: it's imperative to shore up a dwindling base. Alongside the slogan, the campaign also demonizes and delegitimizes dissent: shame on those who prioritize the hostages above all; a cease-fire is an insult to those brave soldiers who fought and died for victory. Victory or defeatism. Victory or treason.

Three versions of history

The victory narrative of Netanyahu, Smotrich and their supporters is a continuation of their "Hamas are Nazis" message, constructed in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacres. For many at the time, it was an instinctive, if understandable, reaction to Hamas' genocidal ideology, which motivated the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. It was not intended as a comprehensive historical comparison. But for politicians and their cynical mouthpieces, it served a purpose.

If Hamas are Nazis, then Israel is fighting an existential war against ultimate evil. Questioning how Netanyahu's policies of containment had allowed Hamas to become powerful enough to carry out its surprise attack becomes a waste of time. And if Hamas are Nazis, then nothing short of "total victory" will do, and there's no need to talk about a "day after" strategy. There can be no day after for Hamas in Gaza.

Netanyahu's pseudo-historians like to compare him to Winston Churchill - though, for the World War II comparison to work, Netanyahu would surely be Neville Chamberlain (if only he had the decency to resign, as Chamberlain at least did). Churchill demanded total victory and the unconditional surrender of Germany, to be followed by complete de-Nazification.

There's a convenient and neat historical symmetry there: after all, Germany did surrender unconditionally after Adolf Hitler's suicide, and the Nazi Party did become illegal. The 'Churchill model' has since become a benchmark for total victory. The only problem is that history is never so neat. Last week marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, and the very different ways in which this milestone was commemorated tell us a lot about different types of 'victory'.

If Hamas are Nazis, then nothing short of "total victory" will do, and there's no need to talk about a "day after" strategy. There can be no day after for Hamas in Gaza.

The three main victorious allies – Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union – didn't agree on the terms or definition of victory. They wouldn't even celebrate victory on the same day. While the British and Americans accepted Germany's surrender on May 7, 1945 in Reims, France, and have celebrated May 8 as VE Day ever since, the Soviets demanded a separate act of surrender, this time at their headquarters in Berlin, and to this day Russia marks Victory Day on May 9.

This isn't just a discrepancy in names and dates. Victory turned out to mean something very different for each country. The United States, under presidents Harry Truman and later the conquering general Dwight Eisenhower, was a benevolent victor. In a series of rehabilitation programs, the best-known of which was the Marshall Plan, they poured billions into rebuilding a destroyed Germany. The western half became the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, and very soon after, one of the world's most prosperous countries under America's newly formed NATO security umbrella.

De-nazification didn't go that far either. While most senior Nazis had died or disappeared, plenty of mid and low-level Nazi officials were very soon back in their old civil service jobs or enjoying a comfortable retirement, with their fully restored, backdated pensions. America's version of total victory guaranteed long decades of peace for Europe after the devastation of two world wars.

For Great Britain, the only country to fight Germany for the entire six years of the war, total victory also meant near-bankruptcy (staved off by American loans), the loss of its imperial possessions abroad and a bloodless democratic revolution at home. Having just won the war, Churchill fought a long-overdue election – and was soundly defeated, less than two months after the crowds in London cheered him on VE Day. The newly-elected Labour government spent its term dismantling the British Empire and building Britain's new welfare state.

In their eyes, victory is Hamas, and preferably every building and person in Gaza, wiped off the face of the earth.

In Eastern Europe, Soviet victory meant wholesale pillage and rape and nearly half a century of complete domination. The victims weren't only the vanquished Germans, but also the nations that had survived Nazi occupation. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was the undisputed victor until his death in 1953. His successors differed only in their degrees of repression - until the collapse of Communism and the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 - but the victory narrative remained, and still does in present-day Russia.

Historic comparisons are always problematic, not only because no two historic situations are ever the same, but because there isn't just one version of history.

Netanyahu and his far-right allies may yearn for a World War II style of total victory, but there would be nothing Churchillian about it. Their vision of flattening and depopulating Gaza, while deflecting all of Netanyahu and his ministers' responsibility for their failed strategy, is a Stalinist and Putinist one.

Netanyahu will never get his victory.

Every poll conducted in recent months proves that a clear majority of Israelis want a different type of victory. They prioritize releasing the hostages still in Gaza as a first step to healing Israeli society, followed by holding the Netanyahu government to account by replacing it in an election. Yes, Hamas will likely retain some power in Gaza and will have to be managed through a long-term strategy that will never allow it to regain the power it had accrued - thanks to Netanyahu. The way to do that is to insist on rebuilding Gaza, with international aid, under a different Palestinian entity. By now, most Israelis, despite the trauma and rage of October 7, have realized that is true victory.

Anshel Pfeffer